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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22605016">Grey Fell Hill</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flora_tyronelle/pseuds/flora_tyronelle'>flora_tyronelle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, death is not the end, fairy magic, wild places</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:07:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,960</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22605016</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flora_tyronelle/pseuds/flora_tyronelle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When a wizard is left out in the cold, his feet will find wilder paths to tread.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sirius Black/Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>RS Fireside Tales Vol.2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Grey Fell Hill</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Prompt:<br/></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a gibbous moon when he went under the meadow. Raven boy, stormy boy, boy with feathers in his hair, dressed in white and bright moonlight; under the meadow he went.<br/>
<br/>
Raven boy, silver eyes, chasing after a pot of gold. Friends he had many, and enemies more, but the one thing he wasn’t was missed.<br/>
<br/>
Nor kissed. Nor wanted in any small way. His friends didn’t care that he was gone. The old elm tree watched in silence. A cloud rolled in front of the moon.<br/>
<br/>
Sirius woke with a start, sweating. The covers were half off, silvery light pouring over his lap through a gap in the threadbare curtains. He was awake and alone in his miserable room, and the moon and grass and the twisting old elm were just in his mind, just a dream. That was all. Tomorrow, he would have no work to go to, no money to pay rent- wait, no. He checked the glowing numerals on his bedside clock. Today. Today was the day his life was due to fall apart. And his subconscious had decided to send him a dream about fuck all.<br/>
<br/>
“Thanks,” he muttered. Then he got up. What was there to stay in bed for? Destitution waited for no man. He dressed, had a smoke, and waited for the sun to come up. His magic always felt strongest when the dawn came. It would give him the strength to make a decision.<br/>
<br/>
It had been five years since the ministry had snapped his wand and cast him out into the muggle world. Five lonely, bitter years of scraping by, surviving off resentment and fury. Five years of mourning his true self, Sirius Black, the wizard, and slumping grimly into the shell he now inhabited. Sirius Black, supermarket attendant, rail thin and feral, inhabiting a hovel in Manchester with nothing to his name but scant possessions and soured magic coursing erratically through his veins.<br/>
<br/>
Five years mourning his two best friends. Only one of them had died, of course. The other had orchestrated his murder. The loss was almost equal, at least to Sirius. He had not been allowed to visit James’ grave. He had not been allowed to see the child who was supposed to call him “godfather”. The ministry had taken all of that away, over a hung jury and a “lack of compelling evidence”. Crouch had wanted him in a cell next to Peter, of course, but Dumbledore had stepped in, persuaded them to let him keep his soul. Of course, Sirius now knew that when he lost his wand, he had lost his very essence, but it was too late now. The memory of his short-lived gratitude still made him sick.<br/>
<br/>
Sparks spat from his fingers: grey smoke curled up around his palms. He started and jerked away, swearing. It would do him no favours to burn down this shitty little place, even if he didn’t intend to stay. Over the years, his fury had caused fires, power surges, burst mains and more questions than he could ever have hoped to handle. After each incident, he had been forced to apologise, forced to move, to pick up and disappear before the ministry could swoop down and reprimand him once again. Even now, he still lived in fear of going back to Azkaban. Those few short months of his incarceration were locked inside him, hard nuggets of absolute despair. He would occasionally dream about the salt air, the slick rock, the screams of his fellow damned echoing in his ears, waiting for a trial that, in his nightmares, never came.<br/>
<br/>
Outside, through the city murk, the sun was straining to rise. Orange light glowed through the smog. The streetlights were switching off, one by one. Sirius tugged the curtains all the way open and looked out at the small patch of sky above the crowded rooftops. It was time to leave. In his chest, a strain of warmth curled around his heart, like a cat winding around somebody’s legs.<br/>
<br/>
He would leave. He would take a bus. He would go north.<br/>
<br/>
~<br/>
<br/>
Even now, he still didn’t like muggle money. The weird little shapes, the dull pictures, the non-sensical decimal system; whenever he was called to use it, he was reminded of his exile, his life sentence to always exist on the wrong side. He was condemned to a foreign country where he would never be comfortable with either language or customs, always looking back across the sea to the land that had once been his birth-right. There, a twenty-pence piece was a fascinating cameo. Something to be passed around dorms, examined closely, laughed at and passed over.<br/>
<br/>
“Single?” The bus driver was curt. Behind Sirius, the queue shuffled impatiently.<br/>
<br/>
Three twenty pence pieces and a crumpled tenner. Sirius handed them over before slumping into a seat. Clouds were back over Manchester; the sun had gone. A familiar sickness settled in his gut, the hollowed out feeling of empty magic.<br/>
<br/>
Slowly, the city rolled away behind him.<br/>
<br/>
~<br/>
<br/>
It was dark by the time Sirius trudged into the silent village at the end of the road. The bus had stopped several miles away- the driver had loomed over him, then shaken him awake. The view through the window had not been promising. The bus depot skulked on the edge of a run-down town, filled with blowing rubbish and a murder of haggling crows, who were skipping up and down across the chipped curbs and squawking at the hiss of the brakes. The people who stood listlessly in line were haggard and grey. Sirius had rubbed his eyes, then peered through scratched plastic at the yellowing map. You are here! Proclaimed a cheerful cartoon double-decker. One of its hands (Sirius shook his head- why were muggles obsessed with making inanimate objects human?) pointed to the gloomy clump of grey labelled “BUS TERMINAL”. The other pointed aimlessly across the page. Out of curiosity, Sirius glanced in its direction. There, just clinging to the edge of the map, a cluster of houses crowded around a long, straggling road. Grey Fell Hill.<br/>
<br/>
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It reminded him of being disillusioned: a creeping cold, inching over his skin. Inside, the fire leapt and spat. The world tugged momentarily at his feet, a burst of intention, dizzying and strange. The smell of smoke clogged his nostrils.<br/>
<br/>
There was a distant humming, then the fluorescent tubes overhead flickered and went dark. Sirius shivered. There was something out there, at Grey Fell Hill. Something waiting for him.<br/>
<br/>
Ignoring the looks of concerned muggles, he had shouldered his rucksack and started down the road west.<br/>
<br/>
The cluster of grey stone houses crouched uneasily in the shadow of the small hill, looking across narrow streets that skirted the edge of the moor. Sirius felt loud and angular just walking through. He kept his eyes up, his hand itching, watching out for something, anything. He had been drawn here. He was certain of it.<br/>
<br/>
At least for the first hour. As the night wore on, his hope steadily waned, his feet growing heavier, hunger gnawing at his belly. Eventually, he sat down on the worn stone steps opposite the pub and stared listlessly at the warm light glowing behind the windows. He had fifteen pence in his pocket and a demeanour that made most muggles stare. He would not be welcome inside; he wasn’t welcome anywhere. His magic felt dormant, the way it always did in the dark. Grey Fell Hill meant nothing at all. There had been no “sign”. A wind was picking up from the edge of the moor. Sirius shivered, and hunched down on the steps. After a while, he fell asleep.<br/>
<br/>
When he awoke, it was suddenly and in fear. The street was still dark; the lights in the pub had gone out. There was nobody around. Sirius suddenly realised that he hadn’t seen anyone at all since he had first set foot in Grey Fell Hill. He was trembling with the cold. From his right, there came the soft sound of a large animal, moving through the dark. Sirius reached for his wand.<br/>
<br/>
“Wake up. Wake up!”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius flinched and lurched awake, truly awake. A small woman was stooped over him, grey hair framing her round face, expression concerned. It was still dark. There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and a brief snatch of talk and soft music spilled out into the night. Sirius looked frantically from side to side, searching for the creature that had been stalking down the street towards him.<br/>
<br/>
“What are you doing here?” The woman asked him. She was looking intently at his eyes, something that did nothing to put Sirius at ease. He tried to get up, but she put out a hand to stop him. “Shouldn’t stay out at night. Fell gets cold.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius’s heart was still racing. He desperately wished he still had a wand. The pub door opened again, and a small crowd shuffled outside, talking quietly. The woman glanced over her shoulder.<br/>
<br/>
“Come on,” she muttered. “I’ll put you up.”<br/>
<br/>
“Why.” Sirius stared at her. His mind kept turning back to the war, memories awoken by the surge of adrenaline coursing through him. Alleyways and grim factories, the grounds of manors and on the banks of an ornamental lake, screaming peacocks or the yells of city foxes, the red and green sparks flying through the night…<br/>
<br/>
The woman looked down at him, expression sympathetic. “Because you think you’re lost, lad.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius froze.<br/>
<br/>
“I am,” he said, although his certainty was all but gone. Magic surged foully up through his guts, and he fought a wave of dizziness.<br/>
<br/>
“Aye. Like I said. Let’s get inside.”<br/>
<br/>
~<br/>
<br/>
She had had to guide him to her cottage in the end; he had struggled to walk. Fear constricted his heart, winding steadily tighter. Every small noise reminded him of the creature from his dream, the heavy sound of paws. His vision swam.<br/>
<br/>
“In you go,” the woman told him, pushing the door open and ushering him through, “kitchen’s down the end of the hall.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius stumbled over the threshold, knocking into a coat rack that crouched behind the door. It reminded him of that horrible troll’s leg in the hallway of Grimmauld Place. His head spun.<br/>
<br/>
“Go through and sit down!” The door shut behind them and Sirius felt a push to his lower back. He could smell something herby, something that reminded him of a long-ago potions class. His breathing started to slow.<br/>
<br/>
The hallway was already small, but it narrowed further due the bookshelves that lined the walls. Sirius carefully sidled between them and ducked under the lintel to enter the kitchen. It was a cosy space, filled with rickety furniture, stacks of books and threadbare rugs covering the flagstones. A large pot was steaming on the stove.<br/>
<br/>
“Sit. I’ll get you some soup.”<br/>
<br/>
His rescuer was small, like her house. The grey hair he had noticed when they’d first met seemed more silver in the soft light, and she was wearing a lumpy woollen sweater that drowned her slight frame. She looked old, but strong. Sirius realised that she hadn’t told him her name.<br/>
<br/>
“You can call me Fern.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius’s head whipped up. Fern set a china bowl in front of him, seemingly oblivious. But then he caught her eye- eyes that had been shadowed outside, in the darkness, but here…<br/>
<br/>
Sirius pushed the bowl away. He was too tired to run, and in any case, he didn’t want to go back outside to face the creature from his dream, but he knew full well that caution was wise. Every pure-blood child was brought up on the stories.<br/>
<br/>
“Ah.” Fern took the chair opposite him and appraised him with those eerie, crystalline eyes. “You are as I thought. A wizard, do I have it right?”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius’s heart began to beat harder again. “What’s it to you?”<br/>
<br/>
“My, aren’t you rude! You’re lucky, boy, that I picked you up. There’s more in Grey Fell Hill than you know.”<br/>
<br/>
Stories flashed through Sirius’s mind. Full moons, bargains and riddles, the perils of a fairy ring. This woman was one of them. A fae.<br/>
<br/>
She would do her best to entrap him and steal his magic. The fae had been cut off a long time ago: they were dangerous, a blight to decent witches and wizards. If he lost an argument, or made a poor deal, he would never leave. She would drain away the only thing that made his life worth living.<br/>
<br/>
“Please, don’t.” His voice shook. He had never begged, not even when MacNair had backed him into a wall and was laughing, ready to deliver the final curse. “Please… I don’t even have a wand. If you take this, I’ll have nothing left.”<br/>
<br/>
Fern stared at him. Then her face softened. It made her seem very human. Sirius tried hard not to view her as one, but she smiled at him and his conviction shuddered. It had been a long time since he’d received a genuine smile.<br/>
<br/>
“In exile, then? Met a few like you. You get lost, end up here. But you’ve nothing to fear from me, I don’t want your magic. I swear to you. My mother was a witch, you know. I’ve a foot on both sides, and I just want you to be safe. Oh, and-” she looked down at the soup bowl and gave him a subtle wink, “- you can eat my food. It’s just ham and peas. You look like you could do with it.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius felt bewildered. The food smelled beautiful, the way food always does in times of hunger. Fern had not told him her name; that was deliberate, names had power over the fair folk. But she’d pulled him from his dream outside, given him shelter, offered him food and spoken freely about magic and her heritage. She knew what he was and had taken him in anyway. And he had nowhere else to go.<br/>
<br/>
He picked up the spoon. Fern patted his other hand absent-mindedly and got up to fill the kettle.<br/>
<br/>
“You can stay here as long as you want. Work for me, think things through. I’ll make up the settee. Alright?”<br/>
<br/>
~<br/>
<br/>
Fern was as good as her word. In the workshop behind her garden, she made all kinds of things: soaps, tinctures, small wooden charms, quilts and shawls. She gave Sirius the tour the next morning. He had slept like the dead on her chintzy sofa, untroubled by dreams, and devoured breakfast at the rickety table. The sun was weakly shining over Grey Fell Hill. Sirius felt more like himself than he had done in a long time.<br/>
<br/>
It was hard to admit, even to himself, just how far he had drifted since the Ministry had broken his wand and sent him away. At Hogwarts, he had been the black sheep- but he’d had friends, teachers, expectations of his future and all the greatness he would achieve. Even when the war had started, he’d believed, absolutely, that they would win. That he and James would stand arm in arm at the end of it, scarred but victorious. Celebrated. Remembered.<br/>
<br/>
An image of James, pale and mouldering, sealed below the ground, materialised in his mind.<br/>
<br/>
“Sirius. Dear. Please control yourself, you’ll burn down my workshop.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius snapped back to the present. Flames were licking over the back of his clenched fists, spitting sparks that singed the towel Fern had very hastily laid down. Smoke swirled around him.<br/>
<br/>
He lurched away, out of the door. Fern kept her garden wild, filled with tangled herbs and non-magical plants that reached out hopeful tendrils to their neighbours, testing the boundaries of where they could colonise. A stone bench was holding out against a creeper with drooping green leaves, tucked against the wall. Sirius sat down. His hands were still burning. He closed his eyes and willed himself to be calm.<br/>
<br/>
When he opened them, the air seemed colder. The plants that surrounded him were now covered in a rime of frost. The smell of smoke had completely disappeared. Fern’s shed was shut tight, empty and overgrown. A spider was spinning a cobweb across the window.<br/>
<br/>
From inside the house, there came the steady tread of paws. The creature was there, in the kitchen. Looking for him.<br/>
<br/>
“Sirius? Are you alright?”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius jerked awake. The air was warm again, and the house was quiet behind them. There was no frost. There was no smoke. His magic felt… soothed.<br/>
<br/>
“I’m alright,” he muttered. He breathed deep, flexing his fingers, probing internally to try and understand this strange new equilibrium. He had been afraid, afraid of whatever it was that was hunting him- but he was certain that it had brought the cold. And the cold had quenched the fire burning on his skin.<br/>
<br/>
What did it want?<br/>
<br/>
It came again that night, when he closed his eyes on the settee. It was outside the front door, breathing softly, shifting on those heavy paws. Sirius sat bolt upright and watched the passageway for a long time. Nothing ever came down it. Eventually, his eyes closed. He must have fallen asleep. Fern woke him in the morning, took one look at his face and heaved a deep sigh.<br/>
<br/>
“Come on. We need to go up the hill. There are some things I need to tell you.”<br/>
<br/>
The wind was wild out on the fell. Fern didn’t speak much as they came through the village, apart from to acknowledge a few neighbours. A few of them looked curiously at Sirius, but nobody said anything. They walked to the end of the street. In the daylight, Sirius saw that one of the houses at the very end of the road was empty and boarded up, steadily falling down as the garden rose up around it. Sirius felt a pang of sadness just looking at it.<br/>
<br/>
Fern noticed him looking. “Been abandoned for a long time now. The family that lived there had a hard time. People round here don’t forget.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius took one last look at the blank windows. “What did you want to tell me?”<br/>
<br/>
Fern wrapped her arms around herself. She was wearing one of her woollen shawls and coat that smelled strongly of mothballs, and her eyes seemed almost normal in the daylight. The lines seemed very deeply etched into her face. “Do you understand my meaning when I say you’re being courted?”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius shook his head.<br/>
<br/>
“Well, one thing that you do know is that witches and fae go way back. A rivalry of sorts, although not always… Look at me.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius did indeed look at her, non-plussed. Fern rolled her eyes.<br/>
<br/>
“I wouldn’t be here if all the fae were after was magic, yes? My mother was a smart woman. Regardless, you were brought up in old blood. You’ve been warned to stay away. To eat of no dish, to drink of no cup, lest there evermore you be fated to sup. Not to spar, with words or wands. To mind where you step in the wild places. All very wise for a young, protected wizard. But the fae keep to old laws, you see. They know their rights. They miss your kind of magic, and they’ll work within their constraints to get it. Part of that is courting.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius swallowed. Courting. That didn’t sound good. “The thing that comes for me… I’m afraid of it.”<br/>
<br/>
“Naturally!” Fern scoffed. “It’s like trying to mix oil and water. Your essence is fundamentally opposite. But they are persistent. They’ll want to know you.”<br/>
<br/>
“Why? What does it want, if not to- to ensnare me?”<br/>
<br/>
Fern levelled her gaze at him. “Let’s keep walking. Out onto the fell.”<br/>
<br/>
They left the empty house behind them and followed the road as it wound away beneath the stretching white sky. A falcon surfed the currents high above, its high-pitched keekee piping across the windswept landscape. Fern kept glancing up at the looming shape of Grey Fell Hill.<br/>
<br/>
“Like I said, the fae keep to their own laws. Those bargains you were warned of as a child? They’re real. So are the riddles. They have their own power, and they can use it how they please. They’re courting you because you have something they want- but they can give you something in return. A chance, or a strength, or a wish granted… Anything, within reason.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius paused. Anything.<br/>
<br/>
Fern stopped beside him. The wind tugged at their hair- Sirius had stopped tying his up five years ago, when he’d lost his wand.<br/>
<br/>
Anything.<br/>
<br/>
“To know what deal might be struck, though, I’d have to let them in. They aren’t permitted to cross my threshold, and you’re under my protection. They can only come to you when you’re dreaming, when the boundary between our world and theirs is thin.” She looked at him, her eyes flashing silver. “I can’t advise you either way. They won’t harm you, though. Not yet.”<br/>
<br/>
There was no comfort in her words, but Sirius could taste something sharp and heady at the back of his throat. He thought it might be desire.<br/>
<br/>
Anything.<br/>
<br/>
“I want you to let it in,” Sirius told her. “I want to know what it has to offer.”<br/>
<br/>
~<br/>
<br/>
That night, Sirius stayed awake for a very long time, fidgeting in a state of unabating anticipation, but nothing came to the door, no nightly noises crept through the window, and eventually he dropped into a fitful sleep. He didn’t dream. Instead, he had a nightmare.<br/>
<br/>
He was in the house in Godric’s Hollow, and the world had ended whilst he hadn’t been looking. The door at his back had been blasted off its hinges, and cold rain splattered over the threshold. The lamp on the hallway table had been knocked aside, the shade still swinging, sending swooping shadows lurching over the walls. There was glass and dust on the floor, spiralling through the air and settling steadily on the body of James Potter.<br/>
<br/>
Sirius stared down at him. He had been here so many times. Every time, he was frozen; unable to reach out, to shake his friend, to help. James’s dark eyes were wide open, his face contorted in shock and anger. It was the expression he’d worn in so many battles. He wasn’t even carrying his wand.<br/>
<br/>
Faintly, from the other side of the house, there came the sound of a baby crying.<br/>
<br/>
Sirius blinked, and then he was there, in the nursery, looking over a scene of devastation.<br/>
<br/>
Lily Potter was slumped on the carpet beside the white painted crib. Her red hair was still as vibrant as it had been in life, spilling over her shoulders and pooling where she lay. She wore an expression of desperation. Sirius stared at her: both of them mute and unmoving, but one of them irrationally spared. It should have been him. They both knew it. Lily’s green eyes, unseeing in their frozen panic, looked straight at him, and their condemnation was more damning than any edict handed down from the dock in the Wizengamot.<br/>
<br/>
Harry was still crying. The sound tore at Sirius worse than any crucio he had ever faced. He couldn’t bring himself to look at his Godson.<br/>
<br/>
Behind him, there came the sound of soft footsteps, the sibilant slither of a dragging cloak.<br/>
<br/>
“Give me the boy, Sirius,” he said, and even now, Sirius could still hear his voice with perfect clarity, the voice that sounded like everyone his family had ever cared for, tainted with the faintest trace of a parseltongue hiss. “Give me the boy, and you do not have to die.”<br/>
<br/>
Harry cried even harder. Sirius felt himself turning, although he would have given anything not to see.<br/>
<br/>
Voldemort stared at him with those red eyes. Sirius knew that he would read his mind and sense his cowardice, but he could not look away, he couldn’t tear his gaze from the figure who had made it his mission to ruin so many lives.<br/>
<br/>
“Give me the boy,” Voldemort crooned, and he stepped forward. His chalk-white hands caressed his wand almost thoughtlessly. Sirius ached to draw his own.<br/>
But he had no wand. He barely had any magic. He couldn’t save James, or Lily, or Harry.<br/>
<br/>
Voldemort brushed him aside with barely a gesture. Sirius crashed to the floor like he was under a full body-bind. Harry was wailing, he knew that something was wrong; mum was lying down, and she had been crying. Dad wasn’t coming. And Sirius, his last protector, had failed him, too. Voldemort reached out those terrible, pale hands.<br/>
<br/>
“Avada kedavra!”<br/>
<br/>
There was a flash of green light, and Sirius jerked awake.<br/>
<br/>
He was sweating and shaking. His heart drummed in his chest. Waves of horror crashed over him as visions from his nightmare replayed in his mind. James, dead. Lily, dead. Harry, dead. Swirling plaster dust. Those terrible red eyes. And, over and over again, those final words. The emerald green flash. Sirius, powerless to stop it.<br/>
<br/>
From down the hallway, there came the soft shuffling of paws. It was like an extension of his dream. Sirius couldn’t move. He stayed sat straight up, watching the shadows, too afraid to even wish for his wand.<br/>
<br/>
The creature appeared suddenly, despite its slow movements. It was a wolf. A huge, silver-coated wolf, with bright golden eyes. Sirius couldn’t take his eyes off it. He’d never seen a wolf in the flesh before. They stared at one another for a long, long moment.<br/>
<br/>
There was no question that this wolf was one of the folk. Sirius could feel it, like an aura: its very presence was unsettling, a blade of ice scraping over his skin. But he also sensed that it was not here to harm him.<br/>
<br/>
He tried to unstick his throat to speak, but found he couldn’t. The horror of his nightmare was still too fresh. The wolf whined softly. Then it padded towards the settee.<br/>
Sirius hardly breathed as the huge creature settled on the floor beside him. Nose to tail, it was as long as he was tall, and a soft heat emanated from that silvery fur. It looked up at him, blinked slowly, then settled down. Like a guard dog. Like it was going to protect him from any more bad dreams.<br/>
<br/>
He didn’t even notice himself fall asleep. He saw nothing. He remembered nothing. When the morning came, the wolf was gone.<br/>
<br/>
The next night, Sirius had only entered the nursery when he was startled awake, as the wolf pulled the covers off and settled on the floor with a huff. His fear was less. He began to look forward to the wolf’s arrival. And one night, Sirius had not even laid down to sleep when the wolf appeared in the doorway. This time, it didn’t come to him. It waited, watching him intently. Sirius got up and followed it out into the moonlight.<br/>
<br/>
They walked up Grey Fell Hill, past curtains drawn tight and little dishes of milk set out by the road. Occasionally, the wolf would stop to lap up a few drops. Sirius tried not to stare. It seemed absurd to him that mere days ago, the very thought of the wolf’s presence had chilled him. Now, it was one of his deepest comforts. He looked up at the waxing moon that hung above the fell and when he looked back, the wolf was gone. In its place was a young man, tawny headed and slender, dressed in a coat of green grass.<br/>
“Hello.” His voice was light and clear. It carried like music across the ever-present wind.<br/>
<br/>
“Hello.” Sirius couldn’t think of anything else to say. All those childhood warnings had vanished, melting away before those amber eyes. Take care with his words? Why should he take care? What did care even matter? There was a scintillation in the air, something shivering and seductive. His magic, strangely quiescent over the past few days, leapt into life and roared through his blood.<br/>
<br/>
The wolf-man smiled. “You’re welcome.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius looked down at his hands and flinched. His skin was glowing with a silvery, pale light; he’d never seen anything like it before. But the feeling… the feeling was familiar. It was the same feeling as grasping his wand. Like coming home.<br/>
<br/>
“Did you do this?” He asked, softly. His heart, an erstwhile empty vessel, had begun to beat with a natural rhythm. It was like breathing truly after five years of partial suffocation. Life without this had barely been living at all.<br/>
<br/>
His companion shrugged. “A gift. You owe nothing for it. Call me Remus, if you like, and tell me about yourself. How did a wizard come to be so far from home?”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius stopped in his tracks. He stared at the creature who had called itself Remus. It was like being doused with cold water. His senses suddenly flared back to life, the senses that had kept him alive during a war. There was danger here. His life hung in the balance. The warmth in his heart dissolved.<br/>
<br/>
“How can I trust you?”<br/>
<br/>
Remus left those words in between them for a long moment. A cloud briefly shadowed the moon, and even in the darkness his golden eyes glowed with an ethereal light. Then he smiled again, a brief, sharp sliver in his thin face. “Do you have to trust me to hear what I have to say?”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius didn’t reply.<br/>
<br/>
“I can only appear to you like this under a full moon,” Remus admitted. “We have a few nights, then my courtship must end.”<br/>
<br/>
“What’s it worth to you?” Sirius asked, bluntly. He reached out and found, to his own surprise, that his magic was still fresh and eager beneath his shining skin. Protego, he thought, and felt a shield fling invisibly from his fingertips to swim in the air between them. His senses warped gently around him. Was this a dream?<br/>
<br/>
“No dream. No value.” Remus reached out a slender hand carefully, probing his surroundings until he found Sirius’s defences. He did not attack. All he did was rest his palm upon the shield and sigh, briefly closing those extraordinary eyes. “Ah, but you are strong.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius spat. He felt reckless again, free for the first time in years- and he used it to turn on himself, once and for all. “I’m not, Remus. I’m weak. That’s how I ended up here. Washed up on the edge of the world.”<br/>
<br/>
Remus seemed almost amused. “Grey Fell Hill is not the edge of the world.”<br/>
<br/>
“No?” Sirius laughed hollowly. “Then how are you here? That’s where the folk exist, isn’t it? On the fringes, in the shadows?”<br/>
<br/>
Remus became very still. All traces of humour vanished from his lovely face. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw our kingdom. Shadows… They belong to your kind. Death and destruction and spilling of worthless blood. Not under the hill. There is only light, I promise you.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius stared him down. “Then I don’t belong there. That’s what your courtship is for, right? To take me under. But I deserve no part of light. Give up, Remus. I won’t go with you.”<br/>
<br/>
For the first time, the fae showed a sign of fractional discomfort. “I can’t.”<br/>
<br/>
“You can.” Sirius answered instantly. His hands were shaking.<br/>
<br/>
Remus pressed his hand harder against the shield, and a weird sensation shivered through Sirius’s gut. “You don’t understand. I was… sent.”<br/>
<br/>
“Sent?”<br/>
<br/>
“He asked me… I swore. Not to tell. I can’t.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius clenched his fists in frustration. Sparks shot from his hands into the damp grass around them. “Then leave! Leave, leave me to die here, take my magic if that’s what you want. I don’t need it.” It gave him a bitter kind of pleasure to say it, even as his shield, his first in five years, warped the air in front of him, caught by the pale light of the growing moon.<br/>
<br/>
“Why do you long for death, Sirius?” Remus was still watching him, still pressed close to the barrier separating them. He was beautiful. Sirius could admit that to himself, without shame or remorse: Remus was a beautiful creature.<br/>
<br/>
But he couldn’t answer his question. There were too many reasons to name.<br/>
<br/>
Fury? Despair? Guilt? The screams of his godson haunting his dreams? They all swirled inside him, churning up the ground of his conscience, soiling his memories. He deserved it, that was what it came down to, wasn’t it? He had still found it within himself to be angry over his exile, whilst his best friend turned to dust and ash beneath cold soil. Whilst Lily’s red hair crumbled to ash. Whilst Peter sobbed pathetically into the rain-slicked rock that should have housed Sirius’s soulless body. All of that should have been him. It should have been him.<br/>
<br/>
“If you send me from you this night, then I will never be able to return,” Remus told him, and he seemed almost desperate. Perhaps it was this desperation that drove his next words- words that changed Sirius’s world forever. “Your brother… he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want you to die. Come with me. Come to him. Please.”<br/>
<br/>
Things were very still, out on the moor. Even the ever-present wind seemed to have momentarily died, like the soft in-breath taken before a scream.<br/>
<br/>
“You’re lying,” Sirius whispered. “My brother’s dead.”<br/>
<br/>
Remus appeared frustrated for the first time, as though he were searching for the right words to say but found them trapped on the tip of his tongue. He dropped his hand from the shield. “Your dreams…” he murmured, and Sirius nearly broke down in tears then and there.<br/>
<br/>
“You’ve seen my dreams,” he spat. “You know-”<br/>
<br/>
“Not your nightmares. The other dreams. I can’t tell you any more than that.”<br/>
<br/>
Unbidden, a memory of the raven-boy under the meadow swam before Sirius’s eyes. His mind seized up, then restarted. Somehow, he had never seen…<br/>
<br/>
“You understand?” Remus asked, softly. “He was a strong wizard, your brother. But he’s stronger now.”<br/>
<br/>
“If you’re lying-” Sirius did not know what to think. His heart was in even more turmoil: confusion, guilt, unbelievable anger. Regulus, of all people, had found a loop-hole? Regulus, of all people, had survived? His slimy little brother? How could he possibly be the last person he had left?<br/>
<br/>
“Haven’t you heard me, all this time? I can’t lie to you.” Remus took a step back. “I can’t force you to believe me.”<br/>
<br/>
“You could bring him to me,” Sirius replied, instantly. “You could bring him here and show me proof.”<br/>
<br/>
Remus laughed. It scraped over the back of Sirius’s neck like the blade of a razor. “And command the wind, too? I can’t force you to believe me, nor can I force another to appear as I do to you. You have a choice, Sirius Black. You can place your trust in me, or in the canker of grief you carry around in your heart. It’s carried you this far, hasn’t it?” The admonishment was plain to hear.<br/>
<br/>
High above, a cloud slid over the moon.<br/>
<br/>
Remus’s figure flickered. He seemed to fade before Sirius’s eyes. And then, just like that, he was gone.<br/>
<br/>
~<br/>
<br/>
After a week, Sirius’s fury had abated enough for him to fully realise that Remus had discontinued his nightly lupine visits. The relief of companionship after his terrible dreams made waking up alone all the worse. Fern watched him with sad eyes and righted the horseshoe that hung above the lintel.<br/>
<br/>
“He’ll not come back unless you ask,” she told him, and Sirius spent long hours alone on the moor trying to decipher if that was his true desire. The wind howled its lonesome song into his numb ears. The passing days hollowed him out, swallowed him up, whittled him further and further down. He had never felt further from his magic.<br/>
<br/>
In the red light of a sinking sun, Sirius found himself stood in front of the abandoned house on the edge of the fell, staring at the blank windows glowing opaquely whilst his heart gnawed on a familiar splintered bone. He scarcely heard the soft footsteps drawing closer in the twilight. It was Fern. She stood beside him in silence for a while, until the moon had begun to shine silver in the inky sky.<br/>
<br/>
“I told you about this house, didn’t I? The first time we walked out this way.”<br/>
<br/>
“You said it had a sad history,” Sirius replied, his voice cracking slightly. He knew too many places like that. Too many histories that ended in defeat.<br/>
<br/>
“Good family lived here. Father was a wizard, mother wasn’t. Their son was down to go to Hogwarts.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius felt a shiver cross his skin. Somehow, he hadn’t expected to find that here. To find another family with a shared destiny. Fern wasn’t looking at him, but she continued her story.<br/>
<br/>
“Nice boy. Quiet. Liked being up on the moor. But his father caused trouble, and trouble always comes home to roost. He upset somebody by the name of Greyback.”<br/>
<br/>
And- and- and- Sirius could barely feel his heart beating, Greyback, the fetid, grim harbinger of a life of pain and punishment, it made sense-<br/>
<br/>
Fern shook her head. “Boy didn’t stand a chance. A smashed window at full moon… He was just a child.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius’s mouth was dry. “Remus.”<br/>
<br/>
“Yes. He has a sense of humour, that boy.” Fern did not sound amused; she sounded melancholy. Sirius turned to look at her.<br/>
<br/>
“The fae took him. They lifted his curse.”<br/>
<br/>
She nodded.<br/>
<br/>
“Why?”<br/>
<br/>
“Because he asked. They courted him and he accepted. His father wasn’t happy, but his mother had barely been able to function for a broken heart, seeing her son suffer every full moon. Even Hogwarts had been taken away from him. What did he have left to live for?”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius stared ahead, unseeing. Remus understood. He’d had nothing left to live for, either.<br/>
<br/>
“I have to see him,” he muttered. “He has to come back.”<br/>
<br/>
“For that, you’ll need my help.” Fern told him. “Come on.”<br/>
<br/>
She took him back to her cottage and pulled a leather-bound book from the shelf. Dust swirled in the soft light from the lamps. “When you sent him away, you bound him to your word. He cannot return to this plane of his own volition. You’ll need to meet him half-way.”<br/>
<br/>
The book opened to an inked drawing of a mandrake leaf, separated from the body and spread out in beautiful curlicues.<br/>
<br/>
“It’ll be hard,” Fern warned him, her voice softer now. “Harder than you know.”<br/>
<br/>
Sirius swallowed. He felt a familiar warmth flood his chest, the singing touch of magic.<br/>
<br/>
“Show me.”<br/>
<br/>
~<br/>
<br/>
The spring full moon was bright in the sky when Sirius went up on the fell. His tongue was loose in his head and his hair had grown long, hanging in shadows down his back. He had said his goodbyes. The dark night was rising to meet him, the grass whispering in welcome. Fern had made the preparations. He was ready.<br/>
<br/>
A month with mandrake under tongue, a week of silence, a time uncounted of grieving the life he had, at last, accepted would never return. He would never again walk through Diagon Alley, never reach for his wand in pleasure or in anger, never laugh as a wizard, cry, beg, understand-<br/>
<br/>
He was no longer a wizard. He hadn’t been one in a very long time. He had buried that right when they’d buried Lily and James; he would never belong there again.<br/>
<br/>
But he could belong somewhere else. He could find whatever was left to him.<br/>
<br/>
The sky was huge above his head, swallowing the dim lights of Grey Fell Hill flickering to the south. Sirius’s skin felt cold and sharp, the way it had the night he had spoken to Remus and he’d been set aglow. He took it as a good omen.<br/>
<br/>
Atop the hill, he stopped. He was dead centre of the fairy ring; he could feel that too, a sensation deeper and older than the wind in his hair. This was the closest a mortal could come to the thinning of the veil. He took a deep breath, and began to change.<br/>
<br/>
His human senses shed like a loose robe, dropping away to scatter in the thick grass. He shrank, grew, altered in a thousand different ways. That was the key to it, Fern had told him. The paring back of layers, the voluntary surrender of all the things that tied him to his humanity. His mind swam, then reformed. His tongue lolled between sharp teeth. Paws connected to thrumming earth. He panted, then licked his chops. James and Lily and Peter and Harry and Reg Reg Regulus- they were just words, meaningless sounds that were far from the ears of the big black dog that stood point on the moon-drenched hill.<br/>
<br/>
The sky flickered, then warped. The stars watched in distant dismay. On the empty wilds of Grey Fell Hill, white wolf and black dog chased back and forth, their joyful howls filling the echoing moor, sending the villagers scurrying for their firesides.<br/>
<br/>
When the sun rose, they were gone.<br/>
<br/>
~<br/>
<br/>
Raven boy, golden wolf, pet black dog with the booming bark; under the hill they slipped and slid. They lit candles in the lilies and rang bells from the snowdrops and made angry war and violent love in an endless whooping cycle of fairy frolics… or so the tales said.<br/>
<br/>
Or so the tale’s warning said, to youngling wizards safe in bed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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